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Thursday, December 24, 2015

Sean, Brooks, and Greg join Megan and Melissa to watch STAR WARS EPISODE VII: THE FORCE AWAKENS! Recording on location just moments before seeing the movie, they discuss their expectations going in, then follow up with their initial reactions once the film is over.

Props to Greg for recording and editing this special edition minisode!

Saturday, December 5, 2015

The main
interest and focus of this series will be the analysis of licensed properties
which have sought to expand the Star Wars
story. While these works contribute to the same fictional universe as the Star Wars movies, they are not
necessarily considered part of the story’s official timeline. Since they are
not granted the same level of credibility as the movies, any works classified
as “expanded” works make up a fictional universe all their own, one with a much
richer history than what was exclusively established by the films.

The Star Wars Expanded Universe began with
Edward Summer, a fellow filmmaker and friend of George Lucas who served as a
marketing consultant on the original Star
Wars film. Lucas and producer Gary Kurtz were extremely interested in
Disney’s marketing model. Summer, who had a number of Disney press kits in his
collection, showed many of them to Lucas and Kurtz. According to Summer, the
marketing of Peter Pan was
particularly masterful and stood out to them. That film enjoyed a massive
amount of marketing and merchandising, including comic books, toy tie-ins, and
games. This initially served as the model for how they intended to market Star Wars. Although none of them
realized it at that time, it also served as the genesis of the Star Wars Expanded Universe.[i]

Lucas Licensing
oversaw the creation and publication of countless Star Wars stories in printed media, during the production of the
original films and long after. The effort was less structured at first, but
eventually these stories developed their own intersecting storylines,
legitimizing them as genuine contributions to the Star Wars universe. This ongoing effort to maintain the Star Wars mythology outside of the films
was branded, and is now popularly known as, the Expanded Universe.

Like our own
universe, the Star Wars mythology is
an ever-expanding and sometimes contracting world of limitless possibilities.
Also like our universe, there are conflicting theories and debates concerning
how or why (or even if) this occurs. It sounds more like physics than fiction,
but that parallel is one of the reasons I find myself fascinated with the subject
in the first place. When fiction creates worlds, mythologies are born.

So the question
really is...

What is a mythology?

As a point of
clarity, I am defining the mythology of a story based on the themes and motifs
discussed in the works of Joseph Campbell, specifically The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Any story that creates worlds and
explores universal themes within those worlds is, to some extent, a mythology.
What we will focus on as we examine the Star
Wars mythology is how that story creates for us a new expression of the
mythical hero’s journey. This is in part because Campbell’s work on the subject
is as definitive as any work I know, but also because his study of the hero’s
journey was a direct influence on George Lucas when he created Star Wars.

The existence of
an expanded universe in any franchise hints at the existence of a greater
mythology in the core story. While often enough “expanded” works offer little
more than repetitions of the larger story in a smaller medium, some franchises
have managed to advance the mythology even in the absence of an ongoing
incarnation of the core story.

Put simply, that
means that franchises like Star Trek and
Star Wars can be sustainable even
during considerable periods of time where there are no movies or television
series being produced. Stories told in other media - such as novels or comic
books - fill in the gaps between larger productions, even though such stories
rarely enjoy any attention or contribution by the original creators of the
franchise.

Mythology at the
most basic level comes down to two things: The complexity of the universe that
is built around the story and the simplicity of the themes explored within the
story. The universe in which Star Wars takes
place could not be more alien to us cosmetically, but when we examine the problems
and dreams of Luke Skywalker, we cannot help but feel that at his core he is
not very different from us.

The core story
in a fictional universe is focused on themes that are to some degree universal
to all audiences. The story at this level is told in mainstream media that will
appeal to the largest audience, for obvious reasons.

So before we go
into the thematic construction of mythologies, it’s more important for us to
focus on the process of world-building. The mythos of a story is determined by the
scope of the universe it creates and the richness of that universe. Scope
defines size while richness defines detail. An epic story requires scope, but
its mythical qualities are defined in the details.

Continuity vs. Canon

The scope of a
story is defined and ultimately regulated by rules that determine both the
potential and the limitations of the world they govern. These rules are not
overtly stated and are generated over time by events that occur within the
framework of the story. As these events unfold, they create an intuitive
understanding of what is and isn’t allowed in that universe. If this is not
part of a larger plan (which it usually isn’t), how do these universal laws
just organically manifest?

I think in order
to answer that question it’s important to explain the difference between
continuity and canon, because they are the most commonly cited governors of
mythological world-building. Often these terms are used interchangeably, but
they are not the same thing.

Continuity
refers to the level of consistency that can be expected from one installment of
the story to the next. It is quantitative in that it governs the basic
constants of the universe. That James Kirk’s middle name is Tiberius is a
matter of continuity, as is the fact that he is from Iowa and he serves on a
spaceship called the USS Enterprise
in the twenty third century. Someone has to remember from one episode of Star Trek to the next that these are
part of the story’s universe. If this is not done, then the universe is only as
big or as small as it is in the episode you are currently watching, and your
investment in the story is managed accordingly.

Continuity is essentially the
record of what has happened in the history of the story, incorporating all
information contributed to the universe in the course of those events. When
previously established details are later contradicted, the integrity of that
history is called into question and the story illusion is jeopardized.

Canon performs a
similar function, but is a much newer construct as a storytelling device. Canon
is less concerned with specific content as it is with the context of the story
as a whole. Continuity is quantitative, describing the timeline of what
happened. Canon is a qualitative concept, informing our abstract understanding
of the message those events are meant to communicate. In its subtler form,
canon guides our perception of what transpires within the continuity of the
story. In its more intrusive aspect, canon is also used to determine whether
certain events belong in that continuity, regardless of whether or not those
events occurred in an episode of the story that has already been presented to
the audience. Canon sometimes follows the dubious pretext that what was heard
is not always what was said.

It’s complicated
enough when this process follows the events within a single story, even if the
story unfolds in an ongoing series of individual episodes. When you’re dealing
with a franchise that spans several media outlets and formats, many of which
are not created or directly supervised by the original author of the work,
there comes the question of how a story in the expanded mythology is to be
considered. Specifically: What makes a story canonical (meaning that it is
officially regarded to have actually happened)?

There are a lot
of different approaches to how the canon of a fictional universe is developed,
but in the broadest sense it is generated by an indirect creative collaboration
between the story’s creators and its audience. Writers put forward certain
ideas and they are either embraced by the audience and therefore ratified, or
they are rejected and eventually overwritten. This shared concept of what makes
the fictional universe function is generally recognized as its canon.

Canon is not a
function of the mythological aspect of storytelling because if a story is
mythological in tone, the themes within it should already be inherently
understood by the audience. For this reason I will go over what is considered
canon as we discuss various expanded works, but the relative canonicity of
those works will not in any way impact my analysis of them or their place in
the Star Wars mythology. I’m more
interested in the content of the stories as it was originally presented.

Expanding Universes

Star Wars is a movie. Star Wars is a series of books. Star Wars is a series of comic books and
newspaper comic strips as well as television movies, series, and specials. In a
universe that broad, what is “real” and what isn’t? Is all of it real? What if
one story contradicts another? What if a future movie contradicts what is said
in one of the expanded stories? These are not questions that really got asked
back in 1977, but people were slowly starting to decide that they should be.

Star Wars and Star Trek were the first major franchises to address the question
of a comprehensive canon because they were the first franchises to fully
develop their own expanded universes. Corporate entities licensed out
properties as a marketing tool long before Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas
came along, but in the case of Star Trek and
Star Wars we see the first instances
where the original creative force behind the story worked to retain enough creative
control to insure the overall integrity of their fictional universe.

They approached the
challenge in distinctively different ways. Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, considered the television
series and subsequent films to be “Star
Trek fact” (canon) and all licensed properties like the myriad novels and
comic books to be “Star Trek fiction”
(non-canon). The creative teams behind the licensed properties were forbidden
to maintain any continuity of characters and events with each other or indeed
to develop original characters and continuity on their own. The Star Trek Expanded Universe, such as it
was, served merely as a money machine for the various corporations that owned
it. Gene Roddenberry had his research assistant, Richard Arnold, work with the
Paramount licensing office to make sure the expanded works didn’t contradict
the film canon, but there was no concept of an expanded canon that could stand
on its own.[ii]

The same could
be said for the Star Wars Expanded
Universe, but the methodology was significantly different in how it would be
regulated. An absolutist would argue that the only true Star Wars canon would be the films, and everything else is just a
different interpretation of what might have happened outside the films. But
this is not the case in terms of how expanded stories are classified in Star Wars canon.

It all comes down
to control. The amount of control that Roddenberry and Lucas wanted to exert
was roughly the same, as were their reasons for it. They believed in their
creations and wanted to protect the brand they represented. But Gene
Roddenberry didn’t own Star Trek. His
role in terms of how its canon was developed was almost ceremonial. He was a creative
consultant, but Star Trek was
licensed out to unrelated corporate entities with or without his approval.

On the other
hand, Star Wars was owned by a single
person. 20th Century Fox owned the original film, but George Lucas
owned and controlled all interests concerned with licensing and merchandising.
Because Lucasfilm controlled the Star
Wars Expanded Universe, Lucas Licensing could put a lot more effort into
developing it. To that end they created a model that would be more flexible to
the creative process of its contributors and a lot more satisfying to the fans.
George Lucas was just as concerned with protecting his story as Gene
Roddenberry had been with his, but Lucas also had a financial interest in assuring
that the licensed properties had enough creative freedom to be successful in
their own right.

At times it felt
like Gene Roddenberry would deliberately hamstring the creative teams working
on Star Trek licensed properties,
because the expanded works were a necessary evil whose success was of no direct
benefit to him.[iii]
The Star Wars Expanded Universe was a
departure from that methodology because Lucas had full creative and financial
control of it. That distinction is significant, because it meant Lucas had the
unique opportunity to construct a fully-functioning multi-platform fictional
universe with himself as the final judge of what would go into it and the
primary beneficiary of everything it produced.

The Star Wars Expanded Universe was the
first consciously engineered and carefully cultivated expansion of a fictional
mythology. Because its success as an entity has always been a priority, we as
an audience have benefited from the creative directions the Expanded Universe
was allowed to take. Its actual contribution to the overall mythology has
always been questionable, but it was allowed to be self-sustaining as a
microcosm within that mythology, and that’s worth studying too.

[ii]In the Hailing
Frequencies Open editorial page of Star Trek #1(DC’s 1989 comic series), series editor Robert
Greenberger explained some of the restrictions dictated by Paramount’s
licensing team and Gene Roddenberry’s office, including a prohibition against
using any original characters created for their previous Star Trek comic book. The decision had also been made that the Star Trek animated series, which had
previously been considered canon, was no longer considered canon and therefore
the characters from that series were also off-limits.

[iii]In the Hailing
Frequencies Open letters column of Star Trek #5(DC’s 1989 comic book series), a fan letter condemned Gene Roddenberry’s research assistant Richard
Arnold for forcing the DC creative team to dump their original secondary
characters and focus only on main characters. Robert Greenberger was quick to
clarify that Richard Arnold spoke on behalf of Gene Roddenberry, so those
dictates did not come from Arnold but from Roddenberry himself.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Sean, Andrew, and Lynn finally talk Hellraiser. From the nine movies that were made to those that might have been, the gang covers the entire Cenobite experience. Hope it’s everything you’ve been waiting for…

Friday, October 30, 2015

Sean, Andrew, and Lynn give you a little taste of what’s to come with this preview of the upcoming Hellraiser retrospective! Just in time for Halloween. Not as much of a treat as we meant to have ready for you, but enough to let you know what we’re working on.

Sean, Andrew, and Lynn continue to explore the story devices people say they want to see in superhero movies and the attitudes that threaten to keep audiences from getting it. From Zack Snyder’s casual dismissal of Marvel’s successes when talking up his upcoming Batman/Superman film to M Night Shyamalan’s prescient and subtle examination of the superhero legend in Unbreakable, there’s a varied sensibility when it comes to these movies. But what works and what do people really want? And what happens when you actually give it to them? They also discuss other Shyamalan films like the Village and pontificate on the proper way to tell a story in general, but if you’ve listened to this show before, you should be used to that.

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Sean, Andrew, and Lynn talk about the rise of Superheroes in the movies and the weird need to predict the end of superhero movies altogether or compare Marvel’s successes with DC’s planned cinematic universe.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Sean, Greg, and Lynn talk about the documentary “The Death of Superman Lives – What Happened?”, the history of Fantastic Four movies, Star Wars, Star Trek, the myth-building rules of storytelling, developing canon through creative writing, Idris Elba, the Muppets, and Doctor Who!

Monday, September 7, 2015

Sean, Greg, and Lynn cover a broad spectrum of topics in this one: They discuss the New Zealand horror comedy Housebound, the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows, the Scream series on MTV, (of course, as the title of this episode suggests) Fear the Walking Dead, and finally Ejecta, an alien abduction film by Tony Burgess, writer of Pontypool (which is actually pictured in this episode because there aren’t any interesting pictures of Fear the Walking Dead. On a related note: A Google image search for Ejecta will yield some pretty interesting results, though NSFW).

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Sean, Greg, Andrew, and Lynn return to talk about the Jurassic Park franchise, including some comparisons between the original film and the latest installment. And they’re under some pretty firm instructions from VUL-VRON to stay on topic, so they only have a few minutes to work in a little STAR WARS talk at the end.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Sean, Andrew, and Lynn continue to make the case for fun internet dialogue in the Age of VUL-VRON. This time they discuss Mad Max: Fury Road and a little more Avengers. But will VUL-VRON be swayed by their passive pleas for online civility, or will she turn the awesome power of the Volumetric Universality Link against the entire internet?

Monday, July 13, 2015

Sean and Andrew return to discuss Avengers: Age of Ultron, with Lynn's help. But now that VRON has assimilated the Volumetric Universality Link that gives her full access to all data on the internet, will she bring an end to the information age before the end of this episode? Will any of them survive the Age of VUL-VRON?

Monday, June 22, 2015

How did Jurassic World get insurance after the events of the first three films?

Wasn't a single injury enough to warrant a full inspection by dinosaur experts in the first film?

And didn't those experts unanimously agree that the park failed that inspection?

Why are any of the dinosaurs hatched from eggs?

When you clone an embryo do you have to develop it in an egg and hatch it?

Why did InGen build Jurassic World on Isla Nublar?

Wasn't it overrun with dinosaurs by the end of the first film?

Wouldn't it have been easier to start all over in a more secure location?

Why are their research labs inside the park itself?

Wouldn't it be safer to do genetic experiments somewhere a little more private and controlled?

Why would people send their kids across the ocean to a dinosaur island where dozens of people have been killed, under the care of an aunt that hasn't seen them in 7 years?

Why was the Indominus Rex raised in the park itself?

Why was it raised in the actual enclosure that would be used for the exhibit?

Is that how all the animals they create are raised?

How did they fund creating the Indominus Rex or its enclosure when they didn't have a sponsor to pay for it yet?

Why has the CEO not seen their billion dollar experimental exhibit until three weeks before the exhibit opens?

Why didn't someone look into the incident when the I Rex ate its sibling?

Does Chris Pratt live on the island?

Does everyone who works there live there?

If so, why isn't there more reliable transport to and from the island?

Is everyone who works for the park essentially stranded there until a cruise ship full of tourists shows up?

Why did they ask Chris Pratt to look over the I Rex enclosure for security reasons only three weeks before the exhibit was supposed to open?

Who inspected it before that?

Who designed it?

Do they not consult any experts when designing and building dinosaur enclosures?

Why did they think an ex-Navy velociraptor expert would know anything about building a T Rex enclosure?

Wouldn't an engineer with zoo experience make more sense?

How is he a velocirapture expert anyway?

Who raised the Indominus Rex?

If Chris Pratt was the first dinosaur expert they had consulted on the subject, who actually raised it in the first place?

How did someone almost lose an arm feeding the Indominus Rex?

What was the feeding system prior to using a crane?

Why didn't they have a goat trapdoor like they did for T Rex?

Why didn't they raise and feed the I Rex the same way they do the T Rex?

The park is full of dinosaurs. Why don't they know how to socialize and acclimate a predator for a new exhibit?

Why weren't they bothered by the fact that the I Rex had tried to break the glass?

Why didn't they replace it with stronger glass?

Were they planning to open the exhibit in three weeks with cracked windows?

How could they have fixed the glass, or made any necessary adjustments to the enclosure, if the I Rex was already living in it and they have no way to control it?

How was the exhibit to be viewed?

The only observation room was also the security room where the guard was supposed to be watching the monitors, so where would the guests have viewed the I Rex?

How does the I Rex know it can mask its thermal signature?

How does it know that's helpful?

Wouldn't it have done it by accident at some point, while it was still learning what it could do, and wouldn't they have noticed on their monitors that it had done it?

How did it know that scratching the walls and masking its heat signature would make them think it was gone?

What is Chris Pratt training velociraptors to do if he doesn't think there's any practical application to their training?

Why aren't there any scientists studying his progress?

If the only person interested in his work is a bloodthirsty paramilitary corporate mercenary, what does he think will happen as a result of his research?

If Chris Pratt thinks raising dinosaurs for military or recreational use is unnatural, why is he there?

What does he think his job is?

Why does Vincent D'onofrio think the velociraptors are ready for field use when they almost ate Chris Pratt thirty seconds after he stepped into the enclosure with them?

Why is D'onofrio trying to convince Chris Pratt to weaponize the raptors?

Why doesn't he just get someone to raise raptors on Isla Sorna and train them using the same techniques?

Why is Jurassic World's billion dollar experimental dinosaur being guarded by a fat guy who sits with his back to all his safety monitors?

Why do they enter the I Rex enclosure when they can't detect the I Rex?

Why does Bryce Howard have to drive back to the control room to ask them where the I Rex's tracker is?

Why didn't she just call them and ask that before anyone went inside the cage?

If she couldn't call the control room for the I Rex's location, then why can she call out from the control room to tell the others to get out of the enclosure?

Why are they in the enclosure anyway?

If they think the I Rex climbed out, what are they learning by standing there?

There were workmen all over the place outside the enclosure, why didn't they ask any of those guys if they'd seen a giant dinosaur pop out of the top of the enclosure?

Why doesn't the control room monitor the security feeds from all the enclosures?

Why do they need a guy sitting in there at all?

Wouldn't that guy at least have heard a 10 ton dinosaur scratching up the walls and seen that it hadn't actually gotten out?

If the I Rex could scratch the wall all the way up to the top to make it look like it climbed out, COULDN'T IT JUST HAVE ACTUALLY CLIMBED OUT?

Why does the I Rex wait for them to get a phone call before attacking?

Why doesn't it eat them the second they walk into the enclosure?

Why doesn't the I Rex enclosure have a person-sized exit just in case someone gets caught inside with the dinosaur?

Why does the only way out open directly into the park?

Why is there a dinosaur sized exit that opens directly into the park?

Why doesn't the park have an isolation and containment protocol for an escaped dinosaur?

Did they not see any of the other movies?

If the I Rex escaped into part of the park where dinosaurs already run free, don't they technically already have it contained?

Once the guests are evacuated from that part of the park, shouldn't the threat be neutralized?

So shouldn't that be the priority?

Why does everyone think it will be easier to catch the I Rex before anyone finds out?

Why don't they have thermal sensors anywhere in the park other than the I Rex paddock?

Why doesn't Bryce Howard think about her nephews until the I Rex has been free for what seems like hours?

Why are her nephews standing in line for the gyrosphere when they have VIP passes that say they don't have to wait in line?

Why are the gyrospheres independently controlled with no remote override?

Why can the gyrospheres travel beyond the perimeter at all?

Why are the guests able to open the gyrosphere and leave it whenever they want?

Why is there no emergency call function on the gyrosphere in case it gets attacked by a dinosaur?

Why is there no cell phone reception in the gyrosphere?

Why would they let two kids drive a gyrosphere with no adult supervision?

If the I Rex can stomp through the gyrosphere couldn't any large dinosaur crack it?

Why isn't Jake Johnson keeping track of the gyrospheres, knowing as he does that a genetically engineered killing machine is on the loose?

They can track the gyrospheres from the control room, so why do Bryce Howard and Chris Pratt just go poking around looking for it?

Shouldn't they know exactly where it is?

Why is the genetic makeup of the I Rex classified from everyone in charge of keeping it secure?

Why is the CEO angry that the lab developed a super-predator when that's exactly what he asked for?

Why is he mad that they used cuttlefish and tree frog DNA to do it?

If the geneticist knows off the top of his head where I Rex got genetic traits like chromatic and thermal camouflage, shouldn't they have been able to anticipate those abilities in some kind of security assessment beforehand?

What is the asset recovery team trained to do?

Why don't they know anything about the I Rex or what it's capable of?

Why does the control room have biometric readings on all the members of the team even though they are shocked that a potentially life-threatening situation has happened and they are otherwise completely ill-equipped to deal with it?

Wouldn't they have to keep livestock on hand to feed the large predators?

Why don't they try to use that to bait the I Rex?

If the crane that feeds it is the only socialization the I Rex has ever had, why don't they ever try to use it to bait the creature?

Where do they get the great white sharks to feed the mosasaur?

Is there a second equally terrifying park on the island where they farm great whites to be dinosaur food?

If a helicopter-mounted 50 cal machine gun is part of their emergency protocol, why can't anyone on the island but the CEO of the company fly a chopper?

Why do the pterodactyls immediately leave the aviary when it's breached?

Why do they swarm on humans the second they're out?

Are they not being fed at all?

Why aren't the guests gathered indoors for their safety?

Is there nowhere indoors for them to go in case of emergency?

What if there were a hurricane?

Why is it 45 minutes until the next ship comes to take the guests home?

Why aren't the ships ready to take the guests back right away?

Where do the ships go after they drop the guests off?

Is there no available emergency transport?

Why does Chris Pratt go after the I Rex with a Winchester rifle when it turns out to be as ineffective as it looks?

After the I Rex concocts a genius escape plan and removes its tracking sensor, why doesn't it do anything smart ever again?

Why does it leave an obvious trail of death and destruction behind it everywhere it goes?

Why are the old Jurassic Park buildings abandoned out in the middle of the habitat?

Why weren't they re-purposed or torn down?

How do the kids "fix up" a jeep after 20 years of entropy would have rotted the tires and left the battery useless?

What are they tightening under the hood to fix that?

Why did they use raptor DNA to make the I Rex bigger and give it more teeth?

Aren't raptors smaller with less teeth?

Shouldn't they have used spinosaur DNA, since it's already bigger with more teeth?

Why not just make another spinosaur?

Why can the I Rex speak raptor just because it was bred with raptor DNA?

Does it speak tree frog and cuttlefish too?

Is the complex language of velociraptors instinctive instead of being a sign of their high intelligence?

Why don't the asset recovery guys have raptor calls like Sam Neill used in JP3, if emulating raptor speech is so effective at securing their loyalty?

Why does D'onofrio say that they will take the raptors into the field with or without Chris Pratt's help even through he's the only one who can control them at all?

If they only wanted to use the raptors to track the I Rex, why didn't they just keep them muzzled?

Why aren't the raptors chipped with tracking devices?

Why do they even need the raptors to find the I Rex?

Isn't it basically just stomping all over the place?

How do they ever transport any of these dinosaurs if they can't contain one with helicopters and bazookas?

Why does Bryce Howard take her nephews on the I Rex hunt with the raptors instead of TAKING THEM SOMEWHERE SAFE?

Why does inGen have to take over the control room with a whole new staff of paramilitary types?

Why isn't the control room always staffed with these guys?

Where did they come from?

If inGen has redundant personnel for park staff in case of emergency, then why are they otherwise completely unprepared for the most obvious emergency that could happen in the park?

Where is BD Wong escaping to?

If no one else on the island can fly a helicopter, where did this one come from?

If there's another site dedicated to military dinosaur experiments, then why are the inGen guys so concerned with weaponizing the animals in the park?

How is Chris Pratt the raptor alpha if they're all constantly having to save him while he hides?

If the I Rex was made to be bigger than a T Rex and have more teeth, why do they look about the same when they fight?

What's the plan to re-capture the T Rex after it kills the I Rex, since the asset recovery team is both useless and dead?

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Sean, Andrew, Greg, and Lynn get together to talk about Chappie and Kingsman: The Secret Service. Trouble is, they haven’t all seen them. So they talk about Marvel and DC movies and TV shows such as Gotham, Agents of SHIELD, Arrow and the Flash. And gorillas.